Once-quiet Resort Suffers The Affects Of Manhattanitis

August 15, 1985|By Michael Coakley, Chicago Tribune.

MONTAUK, N.Y. — The traffic was heavy. The wait in jam-packed restaurants was an hour or more. And tourists were paying up to $200 for a simple hotel room. All in all, it was a typical Saturday summer night.

While such pressures are to be expected in steeply inflated and always harried Manhattan, it is ironic that the victims of the scrambled scene above were New Yorkers attempting to escape their city by fleeing to once-sleepy Montauk, a coastal resort at the eastern tip of Long Island.

Lured by miles of sandy beaches and unspoiled pine forests, more and more visitors and part-time residents are flocking to this newly fashionable community, only to encounter, to their chagrin, many of the problems they thought they had left at home.

Buoyed by a strong economy throughout the Northeast, especially in metropolitan Boston and New York City, the last few years have seen all of the region`s prime beach areas experience rapid growth and sharply escalating prices for everything from real estate to ice cream cones.

Along the New Jersey shore, up to Cape Cod, Newport and the southern coast of Maine, thousands of urbanites are now advancing beyond the occasional motel weekend in their desire for a more permanant summertime haven.

Taking full advantage of present tax laws that benefit owners of second homes (and seemingly undeterred by the possibility that a number of these tax breaks could be lost if Congress enacts President Reagan`s tax reform package), the affluent devotees of sun and surf are fast buying up the few remaining parcels of vacant shoreline in order to build lavish homes, many of which will be occupied for as long as six months out of the year.

Prime oceanfront homes can easily fetch $500,000. And land values have soared approximately 400 percent in the last five years, so much so that a half-acre lot two or three miles from the beach can cost $90,000 or more.

Those who cannot quite afford this extravagance are choosing instead to buy $100,000 single-room condominiums in converted motels and then rent the unit part-time to help pay the mortgage.

This influx of wealthy part-year residents is fast changing the character of many well-known East Coast resorts while straining municipal services, particularly the scarce supplies of fresh water.

Perhaps nowhere in the region have the development pressures been more intense than in Montauk, for most of this century an isolated fishing village popular with blue-collar workers who could not afford the more upscale resorts nearby.

But as the inventory of land available for purchase has shrunk to almost nothing in such expensive Long Island communities as Southampton, Amagansett and Sag Harbor, potential buyers are being forced to consider what, in the past, was often dubbed ``The Hamptons` Cheaper Brother.``

The widespread development is a fairly recent phenomenon, having begun only in the early 1960s and having accelerated in the last decade with the publicity surrounding the arrival of such New York celebrities as Dick Cavett, Edward Albee and Cheryl Tiegs.

``I don`t like what`s happening in Montauk,`` said Michael Finazzo, an insurance broker and one of many year-round residents who fear that their village, still idyllic in many ways, will be beyond the financial reach of their children.

``I`ve got three boys and I hope they can stay here, but I know it`s going to be tough for them,`` said the concerned Finazzo, a Brooklyn native who migrated here in the late `60s. ``We`re driving our kids right out of town.``

Those young families with modest incomes who are forced to leave are being replaced by well-heeled professionals, most of them from Manhattan, who typically use their beach home all summer and well into the autumn, the wives and children in continual residence throughout much of that period and the husbands commuting out on weekends.

The real estate craze is most apparent on Saturday afternoons during the high season of July and August, when hundreds of prospective buyers trudge through the dizzying array of condominium model apartments and storefront realty offices that are crowding out the village`s bait and tackle shops and other traditional retail outlets.

Motels and restaurants, recognizing the ever-more-lofty financial status of their clientele, have responded by jacking up prices, often to such exorbitant levels that a Montauk family weekend can easily cost $700 or more. The housing boom has continued despite the enactment last year of a more restrictive zoning ordinance in the town of East Hampton, which includes the Montauk community. Montauk does not have its own municipal government. The revised code, intended to reduce the permissible building density on vacant land parcels and to curb commercial use, has forced land prices higher while hurting many local businesses, critics say.

Supporters of the new ordinance contend it is the pressure of the marketplace and not more stringent zoning that is primarily responsible for skyrocketing land values.

``Let`s face it,`` said East Hampton Town Supervisor Judith Hope, ``we`re only 125 miles from the greatest and the wealthiest city on Earth. It`s only natural that what we have out here is a very desirable piece of real estate.``